Posted
by
Soulskill
on Saturday December 06, 2008 @05:18AM
from the clearly-securom-is-doing-its-job dept.

TorrentFreak has posted some statistics on the most pirated games of the past year. Leading the list by a large margin is Spore, made infamous even before its release for the draconian DRM attached to the game. It was downloaded through BitTorrent roughly 1.7 million times, with The Sims 2 and Assassin's Creed following at just over a million each. (It's worth noting that Spore came out in September, so that figure is essentially for a mere three months.) GameSetWatch has posted a related piece discussing the countermeasures involved in dealing with piracy. It's the second article in a series about piracy; we discussed the first a couple days ago.

Yep. I'm included in that statistic, despite buying the game. Downloaded the game when it first appeared, but waited until release day to actually install from my retail version, then use the crack from the pirated version.

Given what a letdown the game was, I should have installed the pirated version earlier and seen it wasn't worth the $50 and just deleted it.

We need more suckers... huh, no... "customers" to fall for the brainwash... hu, sorry... for the marketing overhyping our product, and who will blindingly throw their money at whatever product we manage to persuade them will be the best-game-ever-even-better-than-blowjob-and-beacon-sammich !

Our economy is dying because of all the filthy thieves who selfishly want to see what a game is worth before buying !

I just got into a debate on a forum about this very subject. Unfortunately the Moderator is pro-copyright, and I earned myself a one-week banning.:-( My argument was: "I downloaded Galactica 1980 to see if it was worth buying, and it was worthless trash, so I saved myself from wasting ~$50." I was amazed at how many people rushed in to call me scum, part of the entitlement generation who steals instead of pays, and that I should have supported that show by buying the DVD.

RIAA's propaganda campaign seems to be working. They even have customers claiming I should buy ____ like Galactica 1980!!!

I just got into a debate on a forum about this very subject. Unfortunately the Moderator is pro-copyright, and I earned myself a one-week banning.

"Pro-copyright" doesn't mean what you use the expression for. FSF is pro-copyright. You need copyrights to protect openness.Perhaps he was an advocate of copyright-protection? That's a very different rat.

Major digression:Personally, I'm strongly for strengthening copyrights. As in copyrights being made the inalienable and time-limited right of the creator, and not the sponsor. That would put the incentive back to create more, and not just exploit already created works of arts and science. It would shift the power from the big money to the artists, which I think was the original intent.Of course, it will never come to pass, as long as those with the money make the laws, and think it's perfectly fine that if they pay for a person's living expenses while he invents and creates, it's perfectly fine for them to take all profits of what's invented or created. Me, I call that exploitation, and just the modern form of slavery.

Back on topic:DRM is not about protecting copyrights. It's about the appearance to protect copyrights. It's a CYA measure. If a game doesn't sell well, the company can blame piracy. And the investors will believe it, especially if the protection mechanisms were draconian but still broken. They don't see that the reasons it was broken was because it was so draconian, and the reason it didn't sell well was because it was a crappy game.

Ask a pro-protection why Galactic Civilizations II is so much more successful than Spore. The answers will be interesting, but try not to giggle too much; it's not polite.

However, just because you are not physically taking something from the company, does not grant you the right to play it without paying for it. The company has the right to choose how they want to release the game. You ahve the right if you want to purchase it under those terms, or not play the game.

If you don't like the terms they set for playing their game, then don't play their game. Believing you have the right to play the

Actually, if I bought a product, I should have a right to do whatever-the-fsck-I-want with it. If I get a candybar, I should be able to "copy" it however I want to. If I knew how, I would. And for computer data, I very well know how to do it.

That's theoretical of course, reality is something different. But understand this: copyright and patents are not natural rights, they are granted by the society. They are rights to take away other people's freedoms. Copyright may have served books well, but in "digital millennium" they are barely enforceable and outdated anachronisms of a past era.

If you can't control 1 billion Chinese and others from replicating a trademarked work, how will you control 6 billion Earthmen from replicating copyrighted work?

Entitlement generation -- I love the expression, where'd ya pick it up? And I'm sad it won't come close soon.

Let's face it, copyright serves so companies and people like me could earn money off their products. It's not a right, it's a tool. No, scratch that -- more like a toy. A toy that should be taken away from the babies.

But understand this: copyright and patents are not natural rights, they are granted by the society.

All rights are.

They are rights to take away other people's freedoms. Copyright may have served books well, but in "digital millennium" they are barely enforceable and outdated anachronisms of a past era.

Copyrights are seen as a necessary evil to encourage risk taking where there is a high cost to create but low cost to duplicate. And yes, I do realize that people will still create culture even when there are no copyright protections, but the quality will suffer due to resource restrictions.I guess we should also give up on managing SPAM, identity theft, DNA profiling, etc. since in the information age it's easy to do and barely enforcable.

Let's face it, copyright serves so companies and people like me could earn money off their products. It's not a right, it's a tool. No, scratch that -- more like a toy. A toy that should be taken away from the babies.

A tool like the ability to vote, or getting judged by your peers. These things, like copyright, are not necessary parts of a functioning society, but they have been demonstrated to improve the quality of life. That said, the "babies" have gotten out of control moving the balance between the creator and public too far in favor of the creator. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, reevaluate the implementation of copyright, don't just abandon the idea.

Thing is, large portion of the society actively dislikes copyright. Authors are a minority. Spammers and identity thieves are also a disliked minority.

Society dislikes a lot of things, doesn't mean those groups don't deserve legal protections. The majority has consistently pushed to abolish free speech, regulate private matters, and tried impose it's ideals, with only Constitutional law to keep its whims in check.I would argue in the digital age, intellectual property creators are a significant minority that can't be ignored. Manufacturing, even for physical objects, has become trivial. Anybody can make an MP3 player, computer chip, cell phone, or toy extremely cheaply - what is valuable is the design, which is not cheap to create.

What happens to the "free market" thing? If publishing music and software without copyright and DRM is not profitable, then people should just switch to farming. Western city-dwellers speak of how there's not enough food in the world, there's not enough oil in the world, but none of them desires to farm the land and enjoys driving the cars.

The masses will always complain. They will say schools aren't good enough, yet not want their taxes increased; they say they don't earn enough money, yet pay $5 for a latte. Western societies are built to be "unhappy," which is one of the reason they have progressed so much more in terms of technology. As Adam Smith noted - there are unlimited wants, so the wants satiated by every bit of progress will be replaced by new ones.

Free market and lack of copyright would destroy music/software publishing industries, and probably only book printing industry would survive since they actually manufacture physical stuff.

Which would be a sad loss, not just for individuals in software and music, but for society which loses the ideas and culture from specialized creators.

Taking a step back. Lets say Spore had perfect DRM and very few could afford it, what is lost? All that is lost is the spreading of ideas which can lead to new ones. There really is no clear concrete loss, civilization won't collapse. On the flip side without copyright you lose investment, and viability of specialization which means Spore isn't created and you end up with the similar results. Now if the creator and public compromise, as is the intent of copyright law, you can end up with a win-win. The author has incentive to invest (time & money) in creating knowing they have the opportunity to recover that investment, but at some point their creation must be freed to the public so that the social gain can be fully realized.

As I said, this compromise has been perverted to move too far in favor of personal gain for the creator. The problems with DRM at the time of release (an annoyance) is far less a worry than the problems with DRM down the road when the work is supposed to be public and can't be accessed (a breach of the original agreeement). Unfortunately people on both sides of the argument as well as legislators lose perspective on the original intent of copyright, a compromise between an individual and society to promote progress, and gravitate towards the extreme they like best.

False. There are some rights that are a *natural* consequence of being a human being. Such as the right to not be enslaved, or the right to use your brain, or the right to speak your thoughts, or the right of self-defense against thieves/murderers. *Study Greek, Roman, and Scottish philosophy.*

*Study modern philosophy*If natural rights really are fundamental, why does the list of them differ from person to person?The fundamental problem with the idea of natural rights is that they are either derived from a

No. Some property rights are NATURAL that we should have it. For example, it is natural that I should have ownership of a pencil on my desk. It is in my possession, I can easily exclude others from using it, and if others use it, I can't use it. Regarding physical objects, we have a very natural property rights where taking those rights away (such as in communism) would be highly unusual.

Physical property rights are based on cultural views, not some fundamental natural fact. There have been socities where

Disagree. EVERY customer has a right to either (1) testdrive the product prior to purchase or (2) return the product if it's crap. Since the media does not allow number 2, I choose number 1. I download it first, I try it, and if it's any good then I buy it.

I find it unacceptable that media companies won't allow people to do what even car stealerships will allow (a free testdrive). It's as if they are afraid their product sucks

If you bought a loaf of bread, got home and discovered it had weevils in the center of it, you'd return it to the store wouldn't you? And the store would exchange it or give you your money back. You were sold something that did not live up to your expectations.

You buy a game, and even if it doesn't work, you can't return it.

And yet it seems the industries that produce this effluence, and movies and music, have convinced the world that if you buy a piece of what should be unsellable garbage, you're screwed.

THIS is why piracy is so rife. It has nothing to do with people being cheap, scum or whatever asinine insult is thrown around. It has far more to do with people being sick to death of being ripped off.

Standard excuses for not paying for this or any other game (pick any that apply):

1) I will pirate it first and then pay only if I like it (a la when I go into a restaurant and only pay when I liked the food, or go to the theater to see a film and pay only if it didn't suck). If the game is not PERFECT, I don't pay.2) My pirating is good for the software developer (more people playing, even without paying is good, it gives them lots of free publicity). Piracy increases sales! I am doing them a HUGE favor.3) I am a cheap ass.4) There is no such thing as copyright (or shouldn't be). Other people should create art, music, games, films, and entertainment for me as a favor and fund it out of their own pocket.5) Piracy is a fact in the gaming world. Get used to it. It's the developer's own fault because they should have taken it into account in their business case (besides, they should have been working on this full time as an open source program for free anyway).6) $50 for this game is too much. Come to think of it, $25 is too. And if it is only $10, then pirating it shouldn't be that much of a burden to the developer.7) I do not want to try the demo because the only meaningful way to try out a game is to try out the ENTIRE game.8) Who cares if there is 99.9% piracy, all the developers need is to make just enough money to fund developing another game. They don't need to get rich (after all, I'm not).9) "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need."10) Because I have never had to create, develop and market a game and I don't have a clue as to what it takes to run a business.11) Because DRM is such a great excuse.

If I go to a restaurant and the food is bad, I can get a refund. If I walk out of a movie, I can get a refund. If I buy a book, I can return it. And for that matter, when I go to a bookstore I can actually read the book on the shelf and decide if it is crap before I buy it.

You may get all or a part of your money back depending on the situation or you may get store credit, but the point is that there is a mechanism in place for refunding all or part of the expense on those items if they are crap.

Software is one of the very few things that is almost impossible to return if the box has been opened. Here a few returns policies:

http://www.bestbuy.com/olspage.jsp?type=page&contentId=1117177044087&id=cat12098 - "Opened computer software, movies, music and video games can be exchanged for the identical item but cannot be returned for a refund."

http://www.newegg.com/HelpInfo/FAQDetail.aspx?Module=5 - "Retail Boxed software may only be returned for refund within 30 days of the invoice date if the packaging is unopened and factory sealed. Opened retail boxed software can only be returned for replacement if it is defective or damaged."

Amazon has probably the best software return policy: "Any CD, DVD, VHS tape, software, video game, cassette tape, or vinyl record that has been opened (taken out of its plastic wrap): 50% of item's price." http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=901926&#amount

Fortunately credit card laws are written to protect the consumer, so there are ways to get around that policy. Here's my favorite method:

- Buy something. It's junk.- Return the item to the company using tracking or delivery confirmation.- Wait a month.- Call you credit company and ask to do a chargeback. Provide the DC number as proof the item was returned.- Get money refunded to your card.

Yes of course the chargeback should be last resort, to be used only when the corporate asses refuse to issue a refund.

As for the police issue, I've not had any problems so far. (1) Most companies are located out-of-state so I'm not within their jurisdiction and (2) it's not worth the cost of filing court documents/hiring a lawyer for a $100 or less item. The company just lets it go and chalks it up to "shrinkage".

Jurisdiction would not be an issue, because once it crosses state lines it is an FBI issue. Seeign as it involves the mail, it could also be a Post Master issue. Two groups that you'd rather not deal with.

However, returning a product for a refund and charging back once said refund is not received is not an issue. Specially as you satted, most of the items are low dollar amount.

Having worked for a company that disputed chargebacks, you are right. It is usually not worth disputing small dollar a

.
- Call you credit company and ask to do a chargeback. Provide the DC number as proof the item was returned.
- Get money refunded to your card.

Easy.

Not as easy as that, and not because companies treat chargebacks as fraudulent orders (how THEY choose to treat it does not define what it is-- if they sued you they'd probably lose). (Yes, IAAL.) The real problem is that credit cards pander to the merchant. The MERCHANT is their real customer, not you-- they can screw you 'til doomsday and your "cardmember agreement" holds you still for them. Many credit cards will REFUSE to charge back a merchant without extravagant demonstrations you've tried to negotiate with unreachable telephone personnel-- and in some cases, only if the merchant agrees to accept the chargeback. They may have the RIGHT to charge back a merchant if you dispute, but they sure don't have the inclination.

The bottom line, and I have seen this over and over in my practice, is that credit card companies put OUTRAGEOUS terms in all of that fine print, terms that will essentially bend you over and spread your cheeks if they want you that way. You thought you'd cancelled the card? BZZZZT ! They have the right to uncancel it and start siphoning your wallet again if a charge comes through after the closure date. You forgot to stop a recurring charge? BZZZZT! Late fees, penalty fees, interest et cetera, even after you told them not to disburse any more money for you. I had a client who accepted a card and never paid the ten dollar initiation fee. It went on the card, but since she never used it she never looked at the letters that arrived. A year later, with penalties and interest, she owed two thousand dollars, her limit, and it began to climb higher on overlimit fees.

Oh, and you want to sue the bastards? Check and see if all of that fine print has arbitration clauses, limitations on class actions, or restrictive venue requirements.

As Homey D. Clown would say, lissen up, chilluns. There is REAL money in usury-- always has been, and that is what credit cards are. And we know in America, real money is above the law (because it bought it and lowered it).

Back to the point, the parent's suggestion of trying a chargeback is quaint and charming. By and by, Citi and MBNA and the like don't play dat.

Not to mention all those things you can be reasonably sure you can actually use: You can eat the food, you can watch the movie, you can read the book. I for one am seriously fucking sick of paying the crazy money for a new game that I am WAY over the minimum system requirements for and then have the damned game eat it 10 minutes in if it even runs at all and having to wait a year+(if you ever get a patch at all) that fixes their shit code.

And please don't say "run the demo" because that is BS and we all know it. The demo level is ALWAYS the most well tested and stable piece of code in the game, often having been passed out since before beta stage to try and drum up a buzz. A couple of examples from my own experience: Max Payne and Vampire:Bloodlines. The demos played like a dream and were really fun so I bought the games when first released. That was a BIG mistake. Max Payne had to set in my closet for 9 months thanks to a bug that would crash to desktop halfway through the second level. And Vampire:Bloodlines would have ended up in the trash if the modding community hadn't put out a patch a year and a half later that fixed my bug that was less than 30 minutes in that caused it to freeze the entire PC solid.

And finally as a PC repairman I can't count how many times I have been called on to fix a "virus infection" that ended up being SecuROM, Starforce, or Safedisc. Frankly the new DRM causes more problems that a freaking Trojan. I have had machines that risked burning up the DVD burner because the DRM would keep throwing it into PIO mode, Had every singe burn in Nero fail because the DRM had screwed the Windows drivers, and more random crashes than I can even count. So before I will even pick up a game in the bargain bin I make damned sure I can get a clean copy from P2P. How sad is it that the risk of an infection from the P2P ISO is less than if you bought it at the store.

So they can bitch and moan all the want. I will NOT be buying anymore games at release time thanks to the inability to return code that doesn't work, I will NOT buy any game that I can't find a clean version of so I can avoid the DRM infection on my PC, and I will NOT buy any more games from EA for their completely overboard asshat DRM. And this is from someone who ALWAYS bought a new C&C or MoH. So congratulations! You have mistreated yet another customer to the point they wouldn't buy from you if you entire catalog was on sale for $1.

I had that "every disk fail to burn" crap happen thanks to Starforce. Disks hadn't actually failed, only Windows thought they had due to Starforce. Tossed loads of disks that I figured were bad, probably $20+ worth, before I learned about Starforce and started checking the disks on another system and discovered they were actually fine.

I'm never buying a game on release day again unless it's from a developer I trust. (Stardock for example.) GTA IV is the latest example of customers being absolutely screwed,

7) I do not want to try the demo because the only meaningful way to try out a game is to try out the ENTIRE game.

There lies the problem, though. Most big, marketing-heavy games don't even HAVE useful demos any more. Spore's only demo is the creature creator trial, which is absolutely not an adequate demo because it gives no taste of what the game is like.

Standard excuses for not paying for this or any other game (pick any that apply):

Sounds more like standard misunderstandings from an ignorant given game developer to me. Come to think of it, I think you are a game developer, and I might even know which one. Pity you chose to post anonymously. Kudos to you for supporting democracy, rock legend.

1) I will pirate it first and then pay only if I like it (a la when I go into a restaurant and only pay when I liked the food, or go to the theater to see a film and pay only if it didn't suck). If the game is not PERFECT, I don't pay.

2) My pirating is good for the software developer (more people playing, even without paying is good, it gives them lots of free publicity). Piracy increases sales! I am doing them a HUGE favor.

As opposed to the rationale that all piracy is a lost sale? As long as you twits keep releasing sequels and rehashes, then yes, piracy is definitely not a 0 dollar event. You failed to grab their money, but you succeded in making a potential customer for the next sequel. If you had any business sense you'd look the other way like some other companies have.

3) I am a cheap ass.

Then the failure to attract their money is your fault. People make purchases based on perceived value.

4) There is no such thing as copyright (or shouldn't be). Other people should create art, music, games, films, and entertainment for me as a favor and fund it out of their own pocket.

Sadly you've mutilated this one too much for me to trace back its origins. As far as I can tell, this is about public domain suffocating due to the ability of huge corporations holding on to copyrights in perpetuity. Irrelevent without clarification.

5) Piracy is a fact in the gaming world. Get used to it. It's the developer's own fault because they should have taken it into account in their business case...

I don't hear people trotting this one out often, either, but it is a little odd you didn't mutate this one to suit your needs a little better like you did with the others. It is a fact of the PC Gaming world. So is shoplifting. There's a reason stores don't check people on the way in and out like they do at Disneyland. If we're going to discuss business cases here, let's not forget what makes pirated software valuable to begin with. Do you really think that none of the people that downloaded Spore had purchased a copy? Mmm? You'd expect business cases wouldn't overlook the basic rules of economics.

...(besides, they should have been working on this full time as an open source program for free anyway).

I can honestly say I've never heard this one. This sounds more like a generic Slashdot rant about proprietary software than a piracy debate.

6) $50 for this game is too much. Come to think of it, $25 is too. And if it is only $10, then pirating it shouldn't be that much of a burden to the developer.

If your price is too high, not everybody'll buy it. Basic economics. It's worth adding, though, that the lack of ability to return a shitty game, questions over its quality, and the general bombardment of "THE NUMBER ONE GAME IN AMERICA!" messages make it difficult enough to purchase without some form of evaluation. The copy restrictions themselves pose a problem, now. The games are systematically being lowered in value. This does not represent good business sense.

7) I do not want to try the demo because the only meaningful way to try out a game is to try out the ENTIRE game.

Amusing point. We're now seeing trailers instead of demos. Game developers have strengthened this point.

I know you were joking, but I find your comments a good hook to hang my own.

About a month ago, Blizzard released the 2nd expansion back for World of Warcraft. On the same day, it was also available for download.... from Blizzard. Considering I live in a country where you can't find anything warcraft for sale, that is what allowed me to get the game (I asked an USA buddy to buy an extra copy, and send me the cdkey).

When I open my cabinet, I see a lot of old game boxes. And then I noticed that pretty much al

How am I killing the industry by BUYING the fucking game? Really, did any of you even READ my post? I said I grabbed the pirate version but didn't install it, choosing to wait for the retail release, then installed from that, and used the crack to avoid the Securom crap.

Two areas are being conflated. The PC Games industry is the one committing slow suicide. Consoles are going strong. I think the problem with PC games is that publishers are trying to be force them into the same model as consoles, and it simply doesn't fit.

Given what a letdown the game was, I should have installed the pirated version earlier and seen it wasn't worth the $50 and just deleted it.

This. And now they're charging $20-50 for monthly expansions. Sims style. You know it's intentionally awful when it comes out mid september, and by october they've announced an add-on pack and two expansion packs for sale. I think in $300-500 it'll actually almost have a game. It still won't have evolution or ecology or a sandbox mode or AI like promised, but might actually have a game, and maybe even some of the features they demod at E3, like the plant and pattern editors, and communicating with other species... (No actually, not the first two, then they couldn't charge $20 for a pattern pack like they do now, or however much they'll charge for the first plant pack!)

Its because of the Marketing blitz.Everywhere I look its Spore this, Spore that. You'd have mushrooms in your ears to miss hearing about it.OF COURSE people are going to think: "Whats all the hype about - not like MARKETING has LIED to me before so I'll take a free no-obligation look-see for myself."Some %, possibly significant, of those downloaders are going to perhaps like it and/or will want to play online, so they will sign up for valid copies. These people are new clients - they would not of bought the game otherwise.Now the hardliners-stuck in the 80's software model will cry "these numbers will destroy the game industry". Bollocks. They are getting 1.X million potential clients who would never have bother buying the game to see if it was worth the hype in the first place.

Bruce Eckel for a while released his books for free. And initially things went very well. But then things went downhill because people would end up NOT buying his books. They would have read his books, but not bought them.

Now Bruce is not making the later editions for free anymore. Why? I can only surmise that it did not work out. I once asked him and he said, "oh yeah that it was an interesting experiment."

The problem, perhaps, is in the kind of work he tried to make free.
The evidence seems to point toward entertainment products being benefited by piracy. Not books on programming or other technical non-fiction. These are two very different kinds of products used in very different ways. One should not assume that trends in one should be a good indication of trends in the other.

Bruce Eckel for a while released his books for free. And initially things went very well. But then things went downhill because people would end up NOT buying his books.

Cite?

They would have read his books, but not bought them.

I only heard of Thinking in C++because of the buzz about it being free. I read it online and liked it. I bought two copies on paper, one for work, one for home. My anecdote beats your unfounded speculation, 0 data points to 1.

Now Bruce is not making the later editions for free anymore. Why? I can only surmise that it did not work out.

Ah yes, the incontrovertible proof that comes from idle speculation.

I once asked him and he said, "oh yeah that it was an interesting experiment."

That answer is pretty evasive. Sounds equally likely that he could either be disappointed in the sales, or uncomfortable acknowledging he used the Open Source/"FREE STUFF!" model to make a name for himself. It's

Neither of those links actually prove your hypothesis or provide any data. They're news articles and are only reporting that two authors\publishers are trying something new to promote and sell their work.

I suspect you have motivation to not want to see any real world figures? I gave you good references that do lead to real world sales figures in a number of locations. Here is one below, posted by the Author, who should know. Also see research article in my post above, there is more solid evidence out there - despite being shouted down by the majority of corporate media - hell bent against the idea.

NEW YORK (Fortune) â" In 1999, best-selling author Paulo Coelho, who wrote "The Alchemist," was failing in

Actually, you can. 2D Boy (http://2dboy.com) brought out a very nice game called "World of Goo". I can certainly recommend it: a very nice game, great fun, no copy protection at all, good long demo for free, and the game itself for $20 (nicely low price).

And yet they still got pirated. See, they allow anybody to send in their high-score. And thus they found out that between 80% and 90% of these high-scores come from pirated versions.(http://2dboy.com/2008/11/13/90/)Thus: no DRM, great game, low price: 80-90

Particularly in the case of Spore. That game was sold as just damn amazing. Well often when that's claimed it turns out not to be the case. Fable would be a good example. Had it been what it was originally claimed to be, it would likely be the defining RPG of this generation. Instead it was a fairly average action RPG.

Such is the case with Spore as well. Now I don't know, maybe the game gets awesome in later stages but to me, it seemed very shallow the little I tooled around with it on a friend's copy. The first two stages were really boring. I also had a look at his game on the Civilization stage. Well guess what? I've already seen that done better in a game called... Civilization. I likes me a good Civ simulator, in fact I own Civ 4 and it's two expansions. So if you aren't doing it better than that, and it isn't, well then I am not that interested.

Had I bought it, I would have felt rather ripped off. However I know you have to be careful on those extremely hyped games. You can't go by reviews either. Reviewers have already talked them selves in to how good the game will be, reviews are far too positively biased for Big Hits(tm).

I also think in Spore's case a non-trivial amount of it may have been due to DRM protest. Now you can argue if that's the way to go about it or not, but there were lots of people pissed about it. I've decided EA can basically get fucked. I'm not buying their games with this activation bullshit unless they are absolutely superb. I bought Mass Effect, that game is just that good, but I'm giving most others a miss.

For example I'm not going to get Red Alert 3. I'm a fan of the C&C series and have bought most of them. I quite liked C&C3 and Kane's Revenge. However though I like them, they aren't good enough for me to put up with the activation shit. So I'll get something else instead, Demigod probably.

Now while I'm not going to go nab a copy off Bittorrent, that may be what some people do, people who are put off by the DRM.

I'm reasonable when it comes to DRM. I'll accept that publishers are paranoid and need the "feel good" of having some DRM on the games, even though it seems it really doesn't help (see Sins of a Solar Empire for proof). However when it gets to be bullshit like "You can only install the game 3 times and then never again," well fuck you. Good games, I want to play and replay. I still fire up Baldur's Gate 2 from time to time. You'd better believe I've done more than 3 reinstalls since then. Hell I've gone through more than 3 complete system upgrades since that came out.

EA really seems to have crossed the stupid threshold. In particular the activation limits imply that it isn't so much about preventing illegal copying as it is about preventing a used game market and forcing you to buy new versions. I think the rampant copying will help show that no, this shit DOESN'T stop it.

My theory is Maxis originally planned a single big game, then EA dug in and had them tear three quarters of it out into expansion packs. Everything that couldn't be moved due to technological reasons was simply scrapped. God forbid they actually give people a worthwhile product!

EA is all about consuming as much shelf space as possible. Two years from now, PC game retailers will need dedicated Spore shelves just as they have dedicated Sims 2 shelves right now.

You are right, that's very inconvenient and can't believe you are telling me to go buy this game twice for just 3 files that total up to1 Megabyte.

You have left me no choice but to download the game off the internet and get the three files in need to put into the "Locale" folder. Ifind it frustrating that I have to pirate EA games I have bought to be able to play them.

I hope that in the future you will provide a better service to your customers that are buying your products instead of leaving it up tointernet pirates to provide support for your games.

Regards,******

.....

Dear *******,

All AAA EA titles in Thailand are localized to Thai language. All are locked preventing user to change the language. We have this language switching protection to prevent our goods being export to other territories due to the cheaper price on Thai products. As for Spore, retail price in Thailand is only Â£8.5, while you have to pay for Â£35 in UK.

We also aware that people can get the locale file from the internet. But it is against our policy to provide you the locale files from our side.

We hope you understand and sorry again for the inconvenience.

Best Regards,EA Thailand Support

and why the fuck should I care if it's more expensive in the UK if I don't live there? In fact why do they mention the UK at all?

WHY RESPOND! I DON'T GIVE A SHIT WHY YOUR FUCKING ME OVER FOR THREE FILES!!!

Umm... because they're a company and don't give a rat's rear about you?

Let's calculate. One customer pissed off vs. thousands of cheap "imports" from countries where you couldn't charge 35 quid for a game because copying rates are already higher than the US national debt.

Now imagine you're a company and think accordingly.

Yes, it sucks for you. And don't get me wrong, I'm neither berating you nor taking EA's side here, but that's how it looks for them. You're one customer who already bought the game anyway, and it's not an MMO where they could squeeze any more money out of you.

Everyone always gets hyped around November 4th and other election days, but they forget that EVERY DAY is an election day. Your ballots are your dollars, and by not handing those dollars to companies like EA Thailand or EA-EU or EA-USA, you are slowly but surely driving that company into bankruptcy.

But if you go ahead and "vote" for them, then all you've done is said, "I support you; keep up the good work." You never should have bought that Thai-only game if you wanted an English language version. You should have withheld your "ballots" and kept your money in your wallet, or given it to another company.

Casting votes for or against corporations is the most-direct form of democracy we have.

To take a trip into economy, what you're dealing with is fixed vs. variable expenses. I.e. basic cost to create the ability to create an item, and the cost per item. When you take a piece of furniture, the fixed cost part would be what designing the table costs, while the wood, screws and workforce needed to assemble it would be the variable part.

The tricky part is now that every table has to cover for part of your fixed costs. You split them amongst the units you create and plan to sell and add t

For those of us who had Ataris and Commodores, that day happened around twenty-five years ago.

- Pirated versions load faster.- Pirates versions customize the game (skipping levels, unlimited lives).- Pirated versions don't pound your 1541 drive's head to pieces and incur a $500 repair to fix it!!!- Pirated versions can be backed-up whereas the original can not; the disk dies and you're out $30. The game company won't send you a new one.

I recently bought the native OS X version of Call of Duty 4. (I had the PS3 version for a little while, but I can't get used to playing a 1st. person shooter with the console controller....)

I only got to play online a few times before I was greeting with a "CD key already in use" message and kicked offline. Apparently, quite a few people are suffering from the same issue. Tech. support suggests that improperly exiting the game can cause the main server to hold onto your login info for a while, and to "wait a little while and try again". They also suggest that an "overloaded master server" could temporarily cause it.

Well, that may be true in *some* situations, but the more obvious problem is that pirates have created key-generator programs that make valid keys that wind up matching ones paid for by customers like me. Will they issue me a new key though? No way! Forget it! I've barely been able to play in the last few weeks..... If I finally get online with my key, I guess I need to leave my Mac connected all the time? Ridiculous!

My best friend had the exact same issue with Quake 4 a while ago - which prompted him to stop buying any more 1st. person shooters requiring keys for online play. Activision refused to help him with his problem -- so he was essentially better off just pirating.

Actually, the chance of finding a proper key that is suitable for online play is non-trivial, here is how key generation usually goes:

1) programmer of company develops an algorithm to generate keys2) company runs said algorithm 100,000 times to generate 100,000 valid keys, covering only a tiny fraction of the complete keyspace3) company records those keys and adds them to their master server to allow online play4) those keys are distributed with the games

You jest, but this is precisely what the shareholders will demand of the publishers. They do not understand that piracy cannot be defeated by technical means, so they'll just keep on layering increasingly nasty DRM on the games.

At the same time, they will lobby politicians to implement even more draconian "IP-protection" laws.

So while the headline does induce a warm, fuzzy "serves you right" feeling, the implications are not so funny.

Copying games is about as old as the game industry. About 20 years ago, when I was young, it was often also the only way to actually get games before they were outdated. Not to mention that back then games were often not only cracked but also included a "trainer", i.e. a built in cheat, which actually made the copies more interesting than the originals.

A bit like today with DRM, but back in the good ol' days game crackers actually added value instead of just removing the value subtraction... anyway.

Copy protection is also about as old as the game industry. And no copy protection ever protected a game from being copied. If anything, it led to the rise of certain copier groups. Without copy protection, this kind of organisation would not have been necessary, and I doubt they would have risen to the levels they were until about a decade ago. And without them, the widespread copying would not have been possible.

Stings like Buccaneer and Fastlink certainly put some strain on "cracker groups", but whether or not they continue is no longer of pressing importance for the copying of games. You don't need the sort of organisation anymore that was necessary one or two decades ago. You don't need suppliers, couriers, BBS operators and all the other people involved with acquisition and distribution of software. You only need the person cracking the game. And, more importantly, you need globally one single person to do it, distribution of the crack is easily accomplished through P2P.

Now we see a focus on P2P in the fight against copying. There may be some sort of achivement similar to the stings mentioned above, maybe in 3, maybe in 5 years, but then we'll be on the next technology for getting, cracking and spreading software.

See the pattern? Whatever is done against widespread copying, it is usually too late to actually counter what has already been established.

You want people to heed copyrights. That is a fair demand. I'm actually sure people are very willing to heed them if their demand is met, too. But we're moving away from the demand with the supply. Companies supply software with more and more invasive DRM. People want software that allows them to use it without hassle and without jumping through hoops to be allowed to use what they pay for. Draconian DRM, lawsuits and stings will not help there in any way. It will, if anything, alienate your customer. People are usually quite willing to play fair if they feel they are treated fairly. You offer me a fair deal and I will play fair. You offer me a foul deal and I will play foul.

Stings like Buccaneer and Fastlink certainly put some strain on "cracker groups", but whether or not they continue is no longer of pressing importance for the copying of games.

The thing that bothers me the most is how much tax money went to fund those two operations. (anything that involves law enforcement also involves public funds) Why should the taxpayer have to pay to protect the bottom line of companies? If the release groups and game companies want to fight it out, that's fine with me, (since I'm in

I am not one for draconian DRM, but the reality is that people pirate way too much.The other fact is that draconian DRM doesn't stop people pirating single player PC games and may even encourage it.

If your game is good and has strong multiplayer then you can control piracy through the online multiplayer component (think starcraft, I know plenty of people whose first copy of starcraft was a burnt copy but later bought legit copies to play online) but if your game is shit or mostly singleplayer than you have

A company that makes Spore wants to earn a living. And to do that they put on DRM.

And it just can't work.

The premise of DRM is to make more difficult for people to casually copy the game.That means managing to put restriction for every last game player out there. Everyone has to be subjected to that shit in the hopes that the copying will be limited.

But then, all it takes is 1 single unique copy. 1 single unique time when the DRM has been circumvented, for that copy to be made available to millions via the internet.

Who in his right mind could guarantee that, out of the several millions of sold copies (2 million after 3 weeks according to EA as reported on Wikipedia*), the DRM will stand un-defeated, not even 1 single time.That requires failure rates lower than 1 in several dozen of millions. That are failure rates that even space exploration - with all its engineering brilliance - can't guarantee. And your expecting shitty manufacturer of crappy DRM systems, which can't even stay stable on a machine without crashing it, to be able to guarantee that ?

Even without entering in the stupidity of the DRM's cryptographic details, or the complete out-of-reality of the pay-per-copy failed business model, just the sheer numbers involved tell you that DRM just doesn't stand a snowball in hell's chance to be even remotely reach something that could be interpreted as success.

DRM just can't be the answer to the piracy problem :to succeed it must stop absolutely everyone from copying.to fail 1 single leak is all it takes.That's impossible.

--

*: EA reports 2 million copies sold after 3 weeks.TorrentFreaks reports ~2 million download after 3 months of BitTorrent.

That's an incredibly high... SELLING RATE. Articles on/. have mentioned that 90% piracy is rather the norm in the gaming industries.Whereas, it seems that Spore has sold more copies than it got pirated.

That's some damn fucking sign of tremendous success. And given this success, given all the money Spore has managed to earn, why does anybody need to give a fuck if some punks have downloaded copies of the intertube ?

"It seems that the current generation thinks that charging for software is a bad thing."

That could only be true if the RATE of piracy is higher than in the past. And what you'd need to do is to study what is being pirated and how it compares to 5 or 10 years ago. You could do lots of interesting research in this area provided you have the data.

What we're lacking is facts, and the people providing them have a vested interest in doing research only as long as the outcome they're paying for.

This should be from the I-told-you-so department. Does this really shock any of the/. crowd?

It sucks that something so popular with publishers and unpopular with consumers keeps making headline news (granted,/. headlines are a bit different), because we get to hear the same arguments again and again and again.

And I'd say these numbers are highly suspect to boot. Where does torrentfreak get the rough total number of downloads?

And the "copyright infringement" definition of piracy has been in usage since 1603. Wikipedia has a nice little history of the use of the term [wikipedia.org]. And in any case, what does anyone hope to prove by saying "it's not piracy because it's not robbery at sea?" What do you gain by saying that? It's not like the RIAA are going to string you up on the nearest dockside according to ancient maritime convention.

And in any case, what does anyone hope to prove by saying "it's not piracy because it's not robbery at sea?"

I don't mind people using "piracy" as a sort of shorthand for "copyright infringement". I just object when people try to reason that because the word is also used to refer to armed robbery on the high seas, it is therefore morally and legally equivalent to armed and violent robbery and should be treated in a similar manner.

What most people fail to realize that the legal definition of piracy is robbery at sea, not copyright infringement.

I do agree that the usage of "piracy" to mean "copyright infringement" is outright retarded. When I hear the word pirate, I automatically think of ships with guns attacking other ships for their wares and goods, and maybe even a few ruffians on the boat who might look a little unkempt from being out in sea for so long.

Now, let's ponder for a moment. Was this game P2Ped so often despite the insane DRM mechanisms? Or was it maybe because of it?

How many read about what EA wants to do with their PCs to be allowed to play this piece of... erhm... software? Deep manipulation of your driver makeup, authorisation requirement to be allowed to use what you pay for, the sword of damocles hanging over you in the guise of limiting the times you may activate it, not to mention the question whether or not you'll be allowed to play it when EA decides that you shouldn't any longer because you're supposed to buy the successor...

How many of those copies are actually people who bought the game and for some reason had to activate it once too often, and instead of calling the very helpful, friendly and lightning fast user support people of EA who speak flawless English they decided for the faster venue of downloading the game to play it? Or, how many actually HAD to download it to play it at all because for some funky reason that DRM barfed on them and all EA said was "sorry, problem at your end"?

I'm actually willing to grant the DRM advocates that this time those copies are actually lost sales. But not despite, rather because of DRM. People wanted to play that game and they would have had no worries about the 50ish bucks it costs, but they just didn't want you to mess up their PCs.

Before someone asks, no, I didn't copy it. The money allotted for the purchase of Spore was redirected to Sins of a Solar Empire when I heard about Spore's DRM mechanism. Sins was a purchase of protest, only to turn out to be a pretty well made game. I then saw Spore at a friend's and realized it ain't even worth the bandwidth necessary to P2P it. So, I guess, I'm not in this statistic this time.

Do you have any data to back that up? It's not for SecuRom but the data UbiSoft published about StarForce [ubi.com] strongly suggests that the level of DRM related problems, even with very aggressive implementations, is low. As in sub-1% low. I'm really sceptical that even 1% of this 1 million+ figure is people downloading it "because they had to" after buying it. Occams Razor says the simplest explanation wins - those people are pirates.

Even sub 1% of a few million people is a lot of people. A half percent of a million is 5,000 people. The game obviously sold more than that. Would you really want to take that risk? Let's just assume that it won't affect you, as the chances really are small. Are you comfortable installing an unremoveable root-kit on your machine? I know I'm not. Or let's assume you're ok with both. Are you ok with the low installation limit? For me, no game is worth that potential hassle.

The argument of DRM advocates is that without DRM, their sales would plummet because of rampart copying. When the argument is just "DRM does not work", the counterargument is simply "then we need better DRM". I.e. more through, more hoops to jump through, more privacy invasion, more poking at your PCs inner working.

If the argument is "DRM alienates your customers", this counterargument does not work.

This is ironic. Spore is the only game besides WOW that I *didn't* pirate and actually *payed* for in the last two years or so. Playing Spore without the online component sounds like missing the point to me.

However, my DVD drive ended dying right when I got the game, so I downloaded the image via BitTorrent to install.

People who know anything about that DRM wouldn't let SecureROM on their system, it has no business doing what it does to a system just to play a game.

It's 100% certain they'd have had my money the day the game hit the streets if they didn't have DRM in it. As it is, no. Not ever. Not unless I can run it in a VM where it can't pillage my system, and AFAIK it doesn't run in a VM.

And anyone who wants the game can easily get it in a clean pirated version.

Counting just BitTorrent is undercounting too; usenet is a safer place to get stuff (not as trackable).

A few people have mentioned DRM as shareholder appeasement. It would seem the company would enact more sensible policies if their shareholders were themselves gamers. Either that or people from this group who understand that DRM can always be circumvented.

It would be interesting if a major benefit of holding shares in a company was a discount on the company's products. It's a very old fashioned view of the stock market, but I think you should buy shares because you believe in what a company is doing and want to help them succeed. Of course, their success = your success as far as your ownership goes, so it's not an altruistic act to purchase shares. Currently, many companies are run by people who have no interest in the products being good or even finished are a bad thing as well. Maximizing shareholder value doesn't always give you long term success or a good product - just look at Circuit City. They were held up as an exemplar in Good to Great of increasing shareholder value. Even during that time where they were doing a great job, their customer service (which I guess is one of their main products) was widely panned.

I'm no economist so maybe this idea is hugely naive. I welcome being shown as naive.

Various reasons. One, as has been mentioned, to avoid crackers to look at demo and final and compare (which is, IMO, bollocks since when you use some sensible algorithms to crypt it you can't see jack, just use a boilerplate version of the DRM software that doesn't phone home and you're set. If your DRM vendor doesn't provide that, switch the DRM vendor if you really insist in having one).

Another reason, and more important if you ask me, as a gauge how many copies you might be able to sell. When a million people use your demo, it's likely that more people will buy it than when you see only about 100k using it. Downloads don't really count since they, too, could be redistributed or downloaded from pages that host your demo without your knowledge.

And of course to give people the train of thought: "Well, I got that crap on my PC already anyway, so buying and installing that game won't make it worse".

You're exactly right, i hate the fact that demos are suddenly out of fashion, it used to be the best way to get a good preview of the game. These days i pirate every game that doesn't have a demo and check them out, and buy them if i want to keep playing after the first 20 minutes or so, did that with Storm of Zehir last week, CoD World at War the week before that - IMO it's the only way to do these things.

Well, when you saw Spore, I think you'll agree that any kind of demo would have hurt the sales, not helped them. What would you have demo'ed? The "eat and grow" treadmill in the beginning that I have seen done better in various flash games? Doubt that would have convinced anyone to actually buy the game.

But if it tells me something it is to stay away from games that don't dare to offer a free sample of their gameplay. When they're not confident that the 20ish minutes I can usually play such a demo before I hit the "buy the full version to play on" wall will make me want more, the game is usually good for less than those 20 minutes.

And, bluntly, 50 bucks for 20 minutes... dunno, how much are hookers these days?

Can't we stop it with using the term pirate? Yes, it might be a humurous label amongst us geeks, but by going along with it, instead of actively resisting it, we help to fuel in the minds of those who only hear one side of the story, that people who violate copyright law are bad evil pirates. Let's try using more accurate terms like copyright infringers, or something that doesn't have so much obvious bias in it.

You don't think that 'copyright infringers' sounds even more creepy and disturbing than pirates? I think we need a new term, frankly. I think Free Unauthorised Clone Copying is very appropriate - it's just unfortunate that the acronym is FUCC.

Gross commercial copyright infringers could be referred to as mother-FUCCers. Kids who copy each others games would be little FUCCers.

The "making illegal copies" definition is already in dictionaries. In many parts of the world, probably most, there's a much larger odds people will associate "pirates" with pimple faced teenagers than unwashed men with parrots on their shoulders.

From what I hear, modern pirates [smh.com.au] tend to have heavy artillery on their shoulder rather than a parrot:

Maritime piracy still goes on, and is still a major problem in some parts of the world. Just because someone's smear tactic to conflate illegal copying with theft and murder has been successful doesn't mean we should stop resisting it.

I dunno about the news around your parts, but I've never seen "piracy" used in the context of murder except when combined with boats on the other side of the planet.

Would I agree a greater degree of separation would be warranted if I lived in, say, Somalia? Yes. But I don't. Around here piracy = copying software or peddling in items with faked brands, unless accompanied by a picture of a boat and the name of another country in the headline.

if you want to do away with "pirate", you're going to need a seriously catchy alternative. Forcing people to change the words they use is very difficult. Just look at the way the word "hacker" is used.

I think the folks at the Pirate Bay have the right idea - co-opt the word, make it a positive thing.

Not really. PES is REAL popular in East Europe/Russia. In fact it takes a significant part of the market share in non-US markets.
But unfortunately for them it is usually popular in places where pirating is also popular.

You've never been a teenager, have you? It's bragging rights. Remember kids, the more you download, the longer your penis is.

In my days it was the kind of clothes you wear, later it was having the biggest trading card deck, today it's the amount of ripped software you store. It's not like anyone really needs 20 TB of software (or movies), it's our good ol' hunter and gatherer impulse.

Spore is, if anything, a lesson. I think it should be used as an example in game design classes.

Spore is also a lesson to MMO makers, it really has a lot of qualities found in MMOs and it also shows why so many MMOs fail despite good outlook and design.

The first few chapters in Spore is a lot like leveling your character in MMOs. You play and grind, you build your character, you "level" (as in, gain DNA and "evolve"), you make your decisions where to improve your character, what parts to focus on and what you can do without, aiming for the "endgame".

Then you reach that endgame and realize a few things:Your decisions are pointless. No matter what you "evolved" and no matter what your race is like, the game is the same.The endgame itself stinks. Too much micromanagement, too little freedom in your decisions.

The replay value, which could have been stunning considering the ways you could create your race, is near zero. Most of all, you do not want to replay, knowing that what is in for you in the end is the most tedious, boring part of the game.

Steam isn't better than any other DRM, and worse than most. It's just very convenient, being able to download a game to any computer.

Effectively, however, your Steam "purchases" are rentals. Internet connection down? Games are inaccessible. Account gets banned? Games are lost. Valve goes out of business? Games are lost. Valve gets bought up? Pray the new owners don't change the terms of use to something draconian.

I have a Steam account, I got HL2 bundled with a graphics card a while back. You're talking about offline mode. You have to authenticate online at least once before being able to enter offline mode. Also, each game must be activated online, you can't install games to an offline Steam client.

As with any online activation based DRM, even store-bought steam games get reduced to coasters once the authentication servers are gone.

Have a look at the Steam subscriber agreement. [steampowered.com] It pretty much says that games are tied to accounts, and that Valve can terminate any account at any time for no particular reason, without any recompense.

Uh.. plenty of Steam games can be bought in a brick-and-mortar-store, on a physical medium. Everything HL2 related, for instance.

You don't think it sucks that you have to have a) ask for permission online to play a (legally bought) single-player game, and b) Valve can render the (physical-medium-attached) game nonfunctional by canceling your online account? Inacceptable in both regards, I think.

As I wrote above, I like to own my stuff, and with Steam it just doesn't feel like it.

DRM isn't there to stop someone experienced in illegally obtaining software. It is there to stop the average person from doing so. Most people don't know how to download software, run key generators, replace binaries and that sort of thing. They want to click on something and have it run. It is just like a lock on a house doesn't do anything to stop a professional thief, but it will stop the guy going door to door just trying doorknobs until he's found one that is unlocked. The people screaming "DRM is usel

Not sure about the method, but its the only way. Really, as a general rule, even for things that are part of the criminal code and even felony, only socially unacceptable things aren't done on a daily basis. Kiddy rape -> socially unacceptable. Illegal immigration (also a felony) -> socially ACCEPTABLE. Piracy -> Socially VERY acceptable. Working under the table -> 50/50, depends who you hang out with.

And so on and so on. If something is legal or not often has very little effects on if people c